Sunday, October 27, 2013

Why You'll Dig it:

Sharpest screen we’ve ever seen
Apart from the "Nexus" logo on the back
of the tablet (now orientated vertically
rather than horizontally), there initially
appears little to distinguish this Nexus 7
from its predecessor. But on closer
inspection, the plastic build is noticeably
thinner and less creaky than before,
while the dimpled rear finish of the
older model has been replaced by a
smooth rubbery surface. It’s still a little
slippery though.

Annoyingly, the volume and power
buttons are hard to find by feel alone
and don’t give enough feedback when
pressed. Another design quirk is the
continued absence of an SD card slot.
It would be wise to buy the 32GB model,
which costs around US$400, if you plan to carry lots
of media files and games
around. Otherwise you’ll
have to use online storage
or juggle apps and files
constantly.

Another irritant is the
very thin borders on either
side of the screen when it’s
held vertically. If you prefer
to hold a tablet with your
thumbs resting on the
border, rather than
gripping it like a phone,
then you’ll find yourself
accidentally tapping one of
the onscreen controls. It’s
an annoyance that would
have been avoided if the Nexus had
bigger borders or a touchscreen that’s
smart enough to realize when you’ve
accidentally grazed it.

The Nexus 7’s best new feature is its
high-resolution screen. At 1920x1200
pixels, it’s easily the sharpest of any 7in
or 8in tablet screen we’ve seen so far. Text
is exceptionally crisp, while photos and
videos look vibrant and rich. The screen
is almost painfully bright at its highest
brightness setting, so it’s more than good
enough when turned
down halfway to
conserve battery life.
Battery life was one
of the original Nexus
7’s few weaknesses.
Rival mini tablets
easily surpassed its
so-so battery life
(seven hours when
playing videos
continuously). The
new model is much
better, lasting 10
hours and 38 minutes.
This is still behind the
Amazon Kindle Fire HD and
the iPad Mini, which last for 11 and 12
hours respectively, but neither has a
screen as good as the Nexus 7’s.

The first Nexus 7 only had a frontfacing
camera for use when making
video calls, but the new model also has
a five-megapixel, rear-facing camera.
It’s not good enough for regular use as
your main camera, however.

We’d have forgiven the Nexus 7 for a
less-than-perfect performance given its
low price, but its quad-core 1.5GHz
Snapdragon S4 processor and 2GB of
memory sped through our benchmark
tests. The Nexus 7 is more than fast
enough for playing the latest 3D games.
In everyday use, we only occasionally
encountered lag and stuttering when
navigating the interface and apps.

Get new Android versions early
One of the best things about the Nexus is
that you’ll get new versions of Android
quickly. With other Android tablets you’ll
have to wait weeks or even months for
updates and some models will never get
updated at all. New Android versions
often include security patches as well as
new features.Having said that, the new
Android version included with the Nexus
7 – 4.3 Jelly Bean – is only a minor
upgrade over 4.2, but there’s one handy
new feature parents will appreciate,
which is that you can now create a
restricted account for kids, choosing
which apps they can access. It’s not a
complete child-control package. You can’t
create a list of websites they’re allowed to
visit, for example, but it’s still a useful
feature to have. This builds on the user
accounts feature introduced in 4.2, which
let different members of your household
have their own separate set of apps and
files protected with a personal password.

However, one flaw with the Nexus 7,
and indeed all other Android tablets, is
the continuing lack of apps designed for
large, high-resolution tablet screens. The
number and quality of Android tablet
apps is slowly improving, but the iPad
still has a better selection.

Conclusion
The new Nexus 7 isn’t perfect, but its
design is mostly blighted by niggling
limitations rather than serious flaws.
Overall it’s an excellent-value tablet, but
if you’re keen on downloading apps and
enjoying media files, you’re better off
skipping the US$250 16GB model and
paying around US$50 extra for the 32GB model.

To stand a chance in any PvP scenario, you
need a graphics card that won’t fail at frames
when it matters most. Big, widescreen
displays are the standard now, so to push
the necessary pixels in most modern games,
getting a GPU with enough horsepower
is your top priority. Because Crazy 8 was
destined to be a respectable gaming rig, this
was our top priority, too.

Based on the success of the LAN Party
Boxster, we went back to ZOTAC to find
a quality thoroughbred from the company’s
stables. In the end, we decided on the
GeForce GTX 680 4GB, a card with plenty
of Kepler kick, a modest factory overclock,
and a super-sized frame buffer to boot.

The GK104 GPU at the heart of the
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 4GB has
been one of the dominant forces in PC
gaming. The GTX 680 boasts
1,536 CUDA cores and a base clock of
1,006MHz, the GTX 670 has 1,344
CUDA cores at its disposal, as well as a
base clock of 915MHz.

As far as that memory subsystem is concerned, if you haven’t already guessed by now, it’s significant that ZOTAC took the time to mention this GTX 680’s frame buffer size right in the product name. At 4GB, the GeForce GTX 680 4GB offers twice as much VRAM as the standard GTX 670. That extra frame buffer should come in handy when you want to run games at high resolutions and then set all the visual effects dials to "Insane".

The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 4GB
has the necessary muscle for your 3D heavy
lifting. Whether as a single card or the first
half of a future SLI setup, it gives gamers
that vital edge necessary to dominate.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Why You'll Dig it:

How is it that a company that’s been in
business for nearly two and half decades
and now makes some of the fastest consumer
SSDs manages to fly under the radar of so
many power users? Those of you already familiar
with Other World Computing (aka
OWC) already know the answer.

See, OWC, which is headquartered in
Woodstock (Illinois, that is, not that Woodstock)
is one of the leading online Mac retailers.
In fact, OWC’s URL is www.mac
sales.com. Mac fanatics know that OWC
is a veritable one-stop shop for all things
Mac—software, accessories, component upgrades,
etc. That said, even the PC faithful
owe it to themselves to get acquainted with
OWC; as we mentioned, OWC has an impressive
line of solid-state drives. The Mercury
EXTREME Pro 6G just happens to be
one of the fastest SSDs we’ve ever tested.

The cheetah’s out of the bag, as it were,
but let’s take a closer look at what makes this
animal so wickedly fast. SandForce’s SF-2200
controller, which needs no introduction at
this point, is the Hemi under the Mercury
EXTREME Pro 6G’s hood. The SF-2200 is
the controller of choice for the vast majority
of today’s cutting-edge enthusiast SSDs, so
we’re not terribly surprised to see it here. The
Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G is also outfitted
with synchronous NAND flash, which gives
it a nice boost when you’re dealing with data
that’s already compressed.

The Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G’s performance
alone makes it a legitimate contender,
but OWC has a few more tricks up
its sleeve. For starters, OWC lets you take
this SSD for a 30-day spin around your
own personal test track, and if you don’t
like it, OWC will take it back and give you
a full refund. Because we can’t imagine a
sane person actually returning this drive,
what type of warranty are we looking at,
OWC? What’s that you say, five years?
Why, thank you—you really are too kind.

In a ridiculously crowded, unbelievably
competitive SSD market, OWC stands
out as one of the leaders. Keep a close eye
on this company. We’re guessing the bestkept
secret in solid-state storage won’t be a
secret much longer.